Save the world by torturing one innocent child? Which innocent child? - William Stafford

Sending These Messages

Over these writings I bent my head.
Now you are considering them. If you
Turn away I will look up: a bridge
That was there will be gone.
For the rest of your life I will stand here,
Reaching across.

If these writings can bring a turn
Or an echo that touches you-maybe
A face, a slant, a tune- you will stop
Too and bend over them. When you
Look up, your thought will reach
Wherever I am.

I know it is strange. And there’s no measure
For this. The only connection we make
Is a like a twinge when sometimes they change
The beat in music, and we sprawl with it
And hear another world for a minute
That is almost there.

Holding the Sky

We saw a town by the track in Colorado.
Cedar trees below has sifted the air,
Snow water foamed the torn river there,
And a lost road went climbing the slope like a ladder.

We were traveling between a mountain and Thursday,
Holding pages back on the calendar,
Remembering every turn in the roadway:
We hold that sky, we said, and remember.

On the western slope we crashed into Thursday.
So long, you said when the train stopped there.
Snow was falling, touching in the air.
Those dark mountains have never wavered.

"Afterwards

Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.

Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn."